


Make your pleasure of your pains

by Scribe



Category: Slings & Arrows
Genre: Filk, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-20
Updated: 2013-12-20
Packaged: 2018-01-05 06:09:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1090542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scribe/pseuds/Scribe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two productions of Twelfth Night.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Make your pleasure of your pains

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Pax](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pax/gifts).



> This fic took a village; thanks to fiercynn, alyoraShadow, Seascribe, and especially DesireeArmfeldt. I did not heed all of their wise suggestions, so any remaining mistakes are mine.

Oliver has a thousand notes after they struggle through the first off-book run of _Twelfth Night_. Cyril doesn't bother following too closely; as the priest he isn't even on stage until the end of the play, and he's not even sure Oliver's going to get that far before the end of rehearsal.

"I didn't think it was that bad, actually," Frank confides to him.

"I've seen much worse," Cyril agrees. "Still, I've never met a director who doesn't like to throw his weight around a bit."

"Nor will you," says Frank. "Not on either side of the ocean."

"True enough, Ducky, true enough."

They do get through the play, in the end, though without a single note for either of them. Oliver's too busy cajoling his young cast into producing something resembling theater. Cyril figures that he and Frank can be trusted to get on all right under their own steam, at least until closer to opening. Either that or Oliver's given up on them entirely.

"Did you have anything in mind for dinner tonight?" he asks, dropping his pencil in with a cluster of its fellows at the bottom of his bag and zipping it shut.

"Not especially," says Frank. "I think there's a bit of soup left from Wednesday."

"That might do," he says, turning to edge out of the row they've been sitting in for what feels like days. Someone's standing in the aisle.

"Excuse me," says the boy, stepping back out of the way. It's the young fellow playing Antonio, in just for the summer from some university. They've been doing a lot of standing in the background together while the main players get sorted out, but Cyril's not sure they've ever actually spoken.

"Sorry to bother you," he says, "but Oliver told me to talk to Cyril and...Frank?" he casts an inquiring look over Cyril's shoulder.

"That's me," says Frank, and Cyril belatedly lets him by so they can shake hands.

"Geoffrey," says the boy, which is good because Cyril had been drawing a blank on his name. "You're Curio, right?"

"At your service."

"What can we do for you, love?" Cyril asks.

"Well, Oliver said he had a note about my performance, how he wants me to play it, but he wouldn't tell me what it was exactly. He just said to ask you about the first time you did Twelfth Night. So, uh, would you mind? I'll buy you a drink."

Cyril considers it. Geoffrey hasn't been too bad to work with, given that the youngsters who are good enough to land a speaking role on their first go-'round are usually far too used to being the star of the show. He'd often rather have someone with a little less talent and a lot less arrogance, on balance, but Geoffrey takes direction humbly enough. He's over here asking about ancient history because Oliver told him to, anyway, though surely he's got better things to do with his evening.

"What do you think, Ducky?" he asks.

"Why not?" says Frank. "We didn't have anything planned."

And it isn't as though Cyril minds telling the story. He's rather tickled that it's a part of the lore now, the company's history as well as their own.

"What do you think Oliver's playing at?" he muses, once Geoffrey is off to the bar with the assurance that they'll meet him there.

"No idea," says Frank. "But I never turn down a free drink."

***

Cyril knew Frank before _Twelfth Night_ , though not especially well. The youngest thespians at the Swan were always cycling through quickly, finding better opportunities, or looking for them, or running out of money and going home. The handful of them who were in it for the long haul became friends of circumstance, just by being there for show after show. Frank and Cyril were flatmates that year, in fact, along with two of their other young comrades, all of them scraping the rent together by eating mostly eggs and beans on toast and keeping the heat as low as they could stand.

Cyril didn't know much about Frank. He knew that Frank was funny, and good at making conversation, that he was more comfortable being the center of attention offstage than Cyril was. He knew that Frank would take out the trash but had to be goaded into doing his dishes. He knew that Frank was one of the people he had to be careful not to look at for too long in the dressing room, and that it was harder not looking at Frank than not looking at most of the others.

It wasn't much of a problem. He was used to it, after all, had been guarding that particular secret for years, and he didn't even know Frank that well. He just liked him, was all. He was fairly sure Frank liked him too, though more because Frank liked everybody than because he thought Cyril was special, but he didn't mind that so much.

Then _Twelfth Night_ was cast. They did well, all four of them in the apartment with their first real parts, and they celebrated in the kitchen with a slightly excessive amount of cheap wine. Afterward Cyril went back to his tiny cupboard of a room and read Antonio's lines aloud to himself. He knew the play well enough, but it was different now that he finally knew which parts of it were really his, now that he could imagine the months of rehearsals and performances stretching out into the future, hear the words in his own voice and imagine Frank's Sebastian opposite him and bloody hell, this was going to be trouble.

 

"I would not by my will have troubled you, but, since you make your pleasure of your pains, I will no further chide you," said Frank cheerfully one morning, coming into the kitchen. Cyril blinked at him.

"What?" he managed. He'd stayed up far too late the night before, and they had to be at the theater in twenty minutes, and they were out of coffee again. Frank also hadn't seen fit to put a shirt on, which was distracting.

"Come on, no time like the present."

Cyril wanted to come up with a witty reply to that, but he couldn't seem to manage it. He was quiet long enough that Frank started looking a little uncomfortable.

"Or, sorry-"

"I could not stay behind you, my desire more sharp than filed steel did spur me forth," Cyril said grudgingly, trying to make the words come out even and unremarkable. Antonio's lines sounded even more fraught in company than they had when he was rehearsing in his room. It seemed impossible that anyone could interpret them as innocent, but Frank just gave him a pleased smile and gestured for him to go on. Maybe that sort of thing didn't occur to normal people.

It became routine, running lines as they scrounged for their respective breakfasts in the morning. Once Cyril stopped thinking about it so much it wasn't difficult. They didn't bother putting much feeling behind the words, just sped through as a quick memorization check, often half-asleep or preoccupied with coaxing the ancient toaster oven into some semblance of usefulness. Their roommates grumbled a little and then picked up the habit, muttering bits of their own lines as they went about their morning routines. Peter was playing the sea captain and Earl was Valentine, so they didn't have anyone to bounce off of, but they made do. Cyril sometimes overheard Peter doing Viola's interceding lines to himself in falsetto.

So he got used to reciting confessions of love in their kitchen every morning. Sometimes they'd throw in little nods to the blocking, just light touches to indicate where they were meant to clasp each other's arms or pass Antonio's purse back and forth. Frank never seemed inclined to get all the way dressed until the minute they had to leave, and sometimes Cyril had to pay more attention to his breakfast or his shoes than was strictly necessary, but for the most part he stopped worrying. They were just lines.

 

He might have gotten through it all without tipping his hand if only Frank hadn't suddenly decided that they should be friends. It wasn't an unreasonable idea; they were flatmates, after all, and since most of their scenes were together most of their idle time at rehearsal was together, too. He still wasn't prepared for Frank to drop easily into the seat next to him, though, holding a bottle of ginger ale that he definitely wasn't supposed to have in the theater and peering curiously over his shoulder.

"Writing anything good?"

"Ah, no," stammered Cyril, instinctively flipping the notebook closed. "It's nothing serious. Just passing the time."

"Is it your journal?"

"No." Thank God. "Just scribbling a bit. Making fun of the play, mostly."

"Well, you can't just leave it at that. Come on, let's have a look."

He let Frank flip the notebook back open to where his pencil was marking the page. He had a stanza and a half written out:

_Oh, if you set your heart_  
 _on a gentleman's gentleman_  
 _With a reedy voice that fits the part_  
 _of boys who are not yet men_  
 _A word to the wise, don't believe your eyes_  
 _You might want to look again._

_Oh, squeeze him between the thighs_  
 _and see what happens then_  
 _they say what matters isn't size_

"That's not half bad," said Frank after a moment, nudging their shoulders together. "Didn't think you had it in you. Does it have a tune? It ought to."

"Not really. I've just been sort of humming as I go, but it's nothing very good. I think I accidentally stole part of a Christmas carol."

"Well, let's have it, then," said Frank.

Cyril had to lean in close to hum it for him, as quiet as he could so they wouldn't get in trouble for disrupting rehearsal and trying not to think about how his nose was brushing Frank's dark hair. He could smell Frank's shampoo, which shouldn't have been anything special because they all used the same big bottle, but somehow it still set his heart racing.

"I see what you mean about the tune," said Frank gravely. Cyril leaned back in his seat as casually as he could.

"I wasn't planning on showing it to anyone," he retorted, a little stung even though he knew it wasn't any good.

"Oh, that won't do. Everyone will love it, come on, you've got to finish it."

"It's just a bit of fun," he protested.

"I like it," insisted Frank. "You have to do it for the opening night party, you'll be a roaring success."

"By which you mean, everyone will be drunk enough to applaud Peter butchering _Oklahoma_ , never mind my song?"

"Or that. What's to lose? Are you doing anything after rehearsal? I don't think anyone will mind if we use the green room piano."

"What, today?"

"Why not?" Frank sat back a little, his smile dimming. "Or did you have other plans? Sorry, I didn't mean to just barge in on your project like that. You can always tell me to leave off, you know."

"No," said Cyril helplessly, feeling a little like he was watching himself make awful decisions from afar but somehow unable to intervene. "No, let's do it."

 

Frank could play a little, but he didn't have any trouble admitting that Cyril was the better pianist. It was a little embarrassing how pleased Cyril was at the compliment. He tried not to show it. He tried not to show much at all, squeezed together with Frank on the piano bench, humming bits of melody at each other and bickering over whether or not the third line had too many syllables.

They called it a day when they started to get hungry, but they ended up in the kitchen together when they got home and kept talking instead of going their separate ways. It was almost nine when a phone call from Frank's brother interrupted them. They worked on the song some more the next day, and then again the next, or at least tried to. What with all the time they spent getting off-topic and making ridiculous suggestions and generally having no work ethic at all, it took nearly a week to finish. When it was done Frank produced a notebook of blank staff paper and made Cyril write it all down properly so they wouldn't forget before opening night.

Something had solidified by then, and even without the song to work on it somehow seemed natural to stick together, to sit next to each other when they went out with their roommates, to order for each other at the bar or knock on each other's doors when they were bored. It meant Cyril spent more time out of the house than usual, because Frank was friends with everyone and always seemed to have some plan for the night or the weekend, and suddenly it seemed natural for him to sweep Cyril along. He surprised himself by liking it. He liked it while they were out, at least; when he'd gotten back to his room he'd lie awake and swear quietly to himself, remembering the weight of Frank's arm around his shoulders and wishing he could forget it.

 

It made rehearsals harder, too. It was one thing to recite the lines in the morning, which they still sometimes did out of habit even though they all knew the text in their sleep, but it was another thing entirely to do it on stage. That meant saying them directly to Frank with everyone's eyes on him, having to act the emotions instead of just rattling off the words, nothing distracting to do with his hands and nowhere else to look. Every time he opened his mouth he was terrified that he'd give himself away. No one seemed to notice, though, or at least no one said anything about Antonio's motivations seeming any more than platonic. When their scenes were over he would lean against the wall for a minute, breathless and relieved and a little queasy with the thought that he'd only prolonged what was surely coming, only put it off for another day.

When it all went wrong it wasn't, in fact, in the way he'd been expecting.

"Cyril," called Carl, startling him away from a doodle. It wasn't often he got a note, other than the continued tinkering with his little bit of sword fighting, and they hadn't even been running that scene today.

"Yes?" he said, sitting up straight.

"I just don't believe you here. This goes for all your scenes, really, give it some more emotion. We have to believe that Antonio loves Sebastian enough to risk his life for him, right? I'm not seeing that, and without it that whole piece of the plot falls flat."

"Got it," said Cyril. He tried to sound casual but wasn't sure he accomplished it; he was too busy going cold all over with the sudden, awful realization that he was risking his _career_. Of all the ways he'd though this could go wrong, it had never occurred to him that in trying to protect himself he was close to sacrificing everything he'd worked for, everything he wanted. No secret was worth that. If he was too afraid to act, what was the point?

When the stage manager called for act two to begin the next day, Cyril took a deep breath, wiped his hands on his trousers, and gave it everything.

It was barely acting, or maybe it was the height of acting, just the marriage of his own emotions and Shakespeare's words and nothing pretended in it at all. It wasn't hard to look at Frank and see someone he admired, someone he had come to love faster than he'd though possible, someone he might risk everything for if it meant not having to leave him. It made the scene come alive, too. Frank was better with someone to play off—of course he was, and Cyril felt doubly bad for denying him that—and there was only one moment when he was less than perfect.

It happened when Cyril caught his arm, which had always been in the blocking but had never felt urgent before, saying, _If you will not murder me for my love, let me be your servant,_ and Frank faltered. For one long moment he just looked at Cyril. It was a look that was all Frank and not Sebastian, open and off-balance, making Cyril swallow down a sudden return of the old panic before Frank blinked and said, _If you will not undo what you have done, that is, kill him whom you have recovered, desire it not._

It probably looked like just a memorization lapse from offstage, but Cyril was close enough to know better. When the scene was over and they were going back to their seats, he whispered,

"What is it?"

"What is what?"

"On stage, you gave me that look."

Frank shrugged. "Oh, nothing. I was just, er, thinking how unfair the play is to Antonio."

"What?" said Cyril, bewildered.

"Well, he's still arrested at the end of the play. It just gets swept aside in sorting out the twins and all."

"I think you can assume Sebastian gets him out of it," said Cyril slowly. "You know, now that he's married into local power."

"Of course he does. It would just be nice to see it before the curtain comes down, that's all."

Frank gave him a quick smile and sat down, turning to watch Viola pondering her twisted love triangle and not looking at Cyril at all.

 

Opening night was as magical as it always was. The whole show seemed to sparkle, the audience's laughter making jokes that hadn't seemed funny in months suddenly the height of comedy again. Every one of Cyril's scenes went off without a hitch. The end of the play came impossibly quickly, even though Frank had been right and Antonio did spend most of the last scene standing forgotten in back, and almost before he could think the curtain was coming down to a roar of applause.

The cast scattered quickly into the wings, crowding in so they wouldn't be seen, all grinning and laughing and grabbing at each other in the rush of it. He and Frank were upstage left, along with about ten other people, and as Orsino's gentlemen filed out to take their bow Cyril gave him a quick hug, appearances be damned, and Frank—

Kissed him.

It was a good thing Cyril's feet knew his cue, because the only way he managed to bow was on complete autopilot. There was still the entire curtain call to get through, the company rendition of _When That I Was_ , the audience on their feet clapping along and Frank all the way on the other side of the stage, smiling and singing and looking like nothing had happened at all.

He didn't look like that when Cyril finally filed his way past the scrim and wove through the crowd and saw him. He met Cyril's eyes from across the hall and didn't look away but didn't move, either. Cyril shoved his way over.

"I'm sorry," said Frank, before he could even open his mouth. "I suppose I got a bit carried away, thinking maybe you were as bent as Antonio. There's only so many times a man can hear somebody declare their love without wanting to do something about it, you know, even if it is in character. Look, I'll make sure everyone knows it was just me. They won't, ah, no one will think worse of you. I can find somewhere else to live."

Cyril wanted to cut him off, he did, but between the heady joy of the play and the memory of that one unexpected, perfect moment before his bow he couldn't seem to make the words come at all. It felt like applause was still echoing in his ears. Instead he put a hand on Frank's face, smoothed his hair back, ran a thumb over the line of his cheek and watched his expression flicker into surprise and confusion and hope.

"Are you sure?" said Frank.

Cyril nodded, leaning in for another kiss, but Frank stopped him with a gentle hand on his wrist.

"I can still say it was a bet or something," he said. "You don't have to—we can wait until later. Everyone will see us."

And finally, Cyril found the words he needed. Of course.

"Come what may, I do adore thee so," he said, loud enough that the throng of actors in the hallway could hear if they were paying any attention, "that danger shall seem sport, and I will go."

Frank was warm and solid, and he tasted a little unpleasantly like the lipstick from their stage makeup kits. Cyril thought that he might live another hundred years and never spend another moment happier than this.

 

***

"Oh," says Geoffrey. "You mean Oliver wants me to play it gayer? Why didn't he just say so?"

Cyril exchanges a look with Frank and takes a sip of his pint.

"I've no idea," he says.

"Well, that's not so hard," says Geoffrey. "Here." He reaches out to take Frank's hand- with a glance at Cyril for permission, which is honestly funny- and closes his eyes for a second.

Cyril braces himself for stereotype, but when Geoffrey opens his eyes it's nothing but love and loyalty and betrayal.

"But O how vile an idol proves this god  
Thou hast, Sebastian, done good feature shame.  
In nature there's no blemish but the mind;  
None can be call'd deform'd but the unkind:  
Virtue is beauty, but the beauteous evil  
Are empty trunks o'erflourish'd by the devil."

Even Cyril hadn't managed to get that amount of desperate attraction into _this god_ and _good feature_ , and he'd actually been interested in Frank. He laughs ruefully and gives Geoffrey a nod.

"I think that'll do fine."

"Thank you," says Geoffrey, smiling again, and lets Frank go.

They make a little small talk about the production, how Geoffrey's finding the company, and then shoo him off to do whatever young actors do in their spare time these days.

"Well then," says Cyril, watching the door swing shut behind him.

"Good to see who'll be replacing us, I suppose," says Frank. "He is quite pretty, isn't he?"

"Mm. Just Oliver's type. He'd best look out for himself."

"Do you think? I'll bet you a pint he's straight."

"Two pints says he's not by the end of the year."

They shake on it.

"While we're here, give us a run of that song again," says Frank.

"What, the Twelfth Night one? It's horrible."

"I like it," Frank says, just as simply as he had when he peered over Cyril's shoulder to see the first draft, all those years ago.

"Well, you'll have to help me remember how it goes, " says Cyril. "It's been a long time."

Nobody pays much attention when they take their pints over to the piano, Frank leaning up against it and Cyril sitting and running his fingers over the familiar keys.

"I liked your Antonio better," says Frank.

"Of course you did, Ducky, you're biased," Cyril tells him, and plays.

**Author's Note:**

> [Listen to Cyril's finished Twelfth Night song here](https://soundcloud.com/user201942786/look-again)
> 
>  
> 
> Thanks to Asa for the accompaniment.


End file.
